Click HERE to view Rev. Jimmie Scott’s guided meditation during the service.
Today we’re going to talk about living your destiny, because it awaits you! Your destiny; your purpose; your reason for being in this life expression awaits your awakening to it and your living it!
So take a breath as I say those words, because that’s where we’re going to go today. Your destiny; your purpose; your reason for being in this earth suit on this planet at this time awaits your awakening to it and your living it! [Take deep breath] Are you ready? Say, “Yes!” I want to hear a “Yes!” [Congregation: “Yes!”] I wouldn’t even mind an “Amen” or a“Hallelujah!” [Congregation shouts out] Either one of those would be alright, too! They would be alright, too.
So I actually want to take you back. Way back. Way, way back. And I’m going to do that in a guided meditation. So I know you’ve already done a beautiful meditation this morning with Rev. Jimmie; you stayed awake through that, right? So that’s good! So I’m going to invite you to stay awake through it; to do it again, although it’s going to be different.
But really, to make sure you stay awake, if you’re near someone, you could just kind of tap them; tap them a little and go, “Just stay awake.” [Congregation laughs] Go ahead; go ahead! Right now; just stay awake! This is not a time to sleep; this is a time to be awake.
Alright. So take a breath and close your eyes. And as I said already, I want to take you back to a very, very, very long time ago; in fact, in a galaxy far, far away. Before you were who you know yourself to be. Before you were a physical being. When you were pure essence with no form; no personality; no name; no gender; no sexual orientation; no individualization of your own. This is the time when you were simply one in the essence and the allness of God.
Get in an image in your mind’s eye and a feeling in your heart of what that might have been like. And since you don’t actually remember this time, just make it up. Are there swirling colors? Bright white light? Pulsating energy? Is there an all-pervading, all-encompassing sense of love and peace and calm? So be present for whatever this is like for you.
And now imagine. Imagine that the essence and the allness of God so fully desires to know and experience more of Its own divine self that, from within Its own creative nature, a soul described as you is created and sent on a mission to Earth. And at that moment, you come forth from this “soup” of creation.
Also at that moment, you clearly and unequivocally understand your destiny; your purpose. Because God tells you by saying, “Go to Earth, my beloved, and be an individualized expression of me. Go to Earth, my beloved, and be an individualized expression of me.” This is your destiny! This is your purpose!
“Go to Earth and be an expression of my love; my light; my truth; my peace; my creativity; my givingness; my joy. Go to Earth and be a physical, tangible expression of my eyes; my ears; my hands; and my heart. And do it in your own unique way, which is absolutely perfect for you.”
And go this destiny — to this purpose — you say, “Yes!” An enthusiastic “Yes!” Feel yourself saying, “Yes!” right now. “Yes; I will be your love; your light; your truth in my own perfect way! Yes, God; I will be your peace; your creativity; your givingness; and your joy in a way only I can do it. And yes; I will be your eyes; your ears; your hands; and your heart with my stamp of individuality on each of them.”
And so you are ready, and you are excited to come to this early expression and be all of that! You are ready and excited to be an individualized expression of God!
So take a moment to feel this original excitement and enthusiasm and again say to yourself, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
And just as you are ready to burst forth into this human experience, you hear God say, “Oh; and by the way, you won’t remember any of this by the time you actually get there.”
And so now here you sit this morning. Here you are! Your true essence: the soul being that you are surrounded by a garment of flesh and bones. Here you are right now in your particular form; your unique personality; your name; your gender; your race; your sexual orientation; your own individual identity all enveloped in quite a bundle of beliefs, labels, information, misinformation, experiences, impressions and misimpressions …forgetting completely that message from the Divine.
You can come back; open your eyes if you haven’t done so already. And take a deep breath. Stretch a little bit if you need to. [Takes deep breath]
And, oh; by the way, you won’t remember any of this by the time you get there. [Takes another deep breath] Darn! Many of us have forgotten. Many of us don’t remember that experience. Most of us don’t remember. Maybe I should go out on a limb and say none of us remember that: that enthusiastic “Yes!” we gave to being God’s love and light and truth and givingness and joy and creativity here on Earth. And maybe — just maybe — that’s okay. Because maybe part of the journey here — part of the beauty of this journey in our life experience — is to rediscover that. To move into a place of remembering what we already know.
I love the words of Ernest Holmes, who is the founder of Religious Science, which is my spiritual lineage. Although in the first service, I said I used to be a Religious Science minister; I don’t know where that came from, because I still am! But then I thought, well, maybe I’ve become a Unity minister; I don’t know! Maybe it doesn’t matter! [Laughs] Maybe it doesn’t matter.
But I love the work of Ernest Holmes. And he said, in what we call this textbook, or the Science of Mind, he said:
“The Eternal has placed Itself at the center of your being in order that you may function individually. The discovery of this, the greatest truth about humankind, is the greatest discovery of the ages.”
So this morning I offer you a challenge: could this morning be the morning that you open yourself up to this great discovery? Or that you remember? Or that you rediscover? Or even that you reignite this destiny; this purpose; this reason that you came here. This morning it is my hope — my prayer — that you are reignited into the unique and perfect way that you came here to express the Divine. To express, again, these qualities: God’s love; God’s light; God’s truth. Get these in your brain, because I’m going to have you say them back in just a sec’, okay?
You came here to express God’s love; God’s light; God’s truth. You came here to express in your perfect way God’s peace; creativity; givingness; and joy. You came here to be God’s eyes; ears; hands; and heart.
Take another deep breath, all the way down into diaphragm, really deep into what I like to think of as our power center. And I want you to say after me:
“I am here to be God’s love; light; and truth.”
[Congregation:] “I am here to be God’s love; light; and truth.”
Okay; that was alright. [Congregation laughs] That was okay. But there are a lot of you in here, and I want to hear that with a little more enthusiasm. In fact, the same enthusiasm that you said way back when you were still part of that soup of creation! You said it very enthusiastically back then! So we’re going to do it one more time; here it is again:
“I am here to be God’s love; light and truth.” Let me hear it!
[Congregation:] “I am here to be God’s love; light; and truth.”
Alright! You’ve got two more lines to really amp that amp. So I want it amped up with each of these lines. Now you’ve got four things with this one coming around. So I’m going to say them, and you’re going to say them back to me. I know you’re all smart cookies, so you can remember four qualities! Here it is:
“I am here to be God’s peace; creativity; givingness; and joy.” Okay, here we go!
[With congregation]: “I am here to be God’s peace; creativity; givingness; and joy.”
Nice! One more:
“I am here to be God’s eyes; ears; hands; and heart.” We could do some hand movements on this one, too; I would love it! Here we go:
[With congregation:] “I am here to be God’s eyes; ear; hands; and heart.”
And that is the absolute truth that we sometimes forget. But that’s the truth. [Laughs] Don’t you hate it when you remember something, but it’s not quite clear enough to get it out of your mouth? Especially if you’re standing up in front of a group? Which is what I just wanted to do, but it wasn’t quite there. You’ve got to help me with this!
“And that’s the truth. [Sticks out tongue and blows: “Pfffllllllll.”] Who did that?
[Congregation shouts out] Ruth Buzzi! Lily Tomlin as the little girl, Edith Ann. Thank you; that’s what wasn’t coming to me! Edith Ann, as some of you sitting in this room are too young to know that. She wat in a big rocking chair; she was a little girl. And she would say, “And that’s the truth. Pffffllllllll.” [Laughs]
That’s the truth about you.
I love this story — it’s a touching little story; I don’t know if it’s true or not. But it’s a story of a church: a little Catholic church. And one day the congregation, as they were filing in, they actually gasped in horror, because they saw that their statue of Jesus had been vandalized, and the hands had been removed. And they were just distraught over that.
And after the service, the priest got together with some of the key leaders, and they were talking about what they were going to do, and how they were going to replace this statue. And it was a big deal. How are they going to raise money to replace the statue?
The next Sunday the congregation walks back in, and they all gasp again … but this time for a different reason. There’s a handwritten sign hanging over the statute of Jesus that said, “I have no hands but yours.” I have no hands but yours!
[Holds up hands] These are the hands of God right here! Take a look at your hands; take a look at your hands and just say, “These are the hands of God.” Go ahead!
[With congregation:] “This are the hands of God.”
So we’re going to spend a little bit of time this morning sharing some ideas about how to express your purpose: the unique purpose with which you came into this life experience. Be clear: you came in here with it, even if you forgot that.
Gautama Chopra, who happens to be the son of the famous Chopra — as in Deepak — once wrote:
“Everyone has a special purpose, a special talent or a gift to give to others. And it is your duty to discover what it is. Your special talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with your talent is your gift to God.”
And I would like to add to that quote … I always like to just, you know, enhance other people’s statements! [Laughs]
What you do with that gift is a blessing to the world. It’s a blessing to the world!
There’s a great song by the beautiful New Thought singer/songwriter Karen Drucker; many of you know who Karen Drucker is, and her music. And I will not sing these lyrics! Because I am no Kirsten Plambeck [referencing the day’s soloist]; that is not my gift. Singing; I’ve dipped my toe into a bit, but it is not my gift. So I’m just going to read you the lyrics:
“You’re the HEART
You are the HANDS
You are the VOICE of Spirit on earth
And who you are
And all you do
Is a blessing to the world.”
And again I say: That’s the truth. Pffffflllllll. [Laughs with congregation]
We’ve come here to sing, if you will, our unique song. And there’s a great story of a tribe in Africa that believed that every single person had within them their own unique song. It was in them. And when a woman became pregnant, they would gather and they would sit around this woman, and they would be in prayer and meditation until that baby in the mother’s womb … until that baby’s song became clear. And then they would sing it. And then they would go to the village and they would teach all the villagers how to sing that particular song: unique to that child that wasn’t even here yet.
And when that child did get born, they would gather around it and they would sing it. And when that child grew up and went to school for the first time, and started an education, they would gather around that child and they would sing it. And when that child was initiated into adulthood, they would gather around again and they would sing it. And when that child got married, they would sing it. And when every single significant occurrence or transition happened in that person’s life, the tribe would gather and sing their song. And they would sing it as the soul of that individual was getting ready to transition into the next life. They would gather around and sing that song.
There was one other time they would gather and sing the song. And that was if this person had done a crime against the tribe. Had done something hurtful or harmful to the tribe. They wouldn’t pull that person off and punish them; they would bring them in and put them in the middle of the circle. And the tribe would sing their song. Because they knew that, really, the answer to any behavior like that was simply reminding someone of who they were.
Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get a song. Did any of you get that? I’m just checking! Did anybody get a song: just yours. Okay; you did! Good for you! She got one! Most of us didn’t; most of us didn’t get that to tell us who we were. So we have to discover it and, perhaps, rediscover it and rediscover it.
So of course the question is: “Okay, this is all lovely, Michele … but how? How do I do that?” The “how” is always the question! That’s always the big question: How do I do this?
Well, there are clues around you. There are clues in your life to help you understand and to know how it is that you came here to show up in the world.
Carl Jung, the great psychologist, once said:
“Your vision …”
And I’m going to tweak that a bit and say purpose, destiny …
“… will become clear when you look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
So, yes; we do awaken to our reason for being here from the inside. And … just one little disagreement with Mr. Jung in that “who looks outside dreams …” Well, sometimes there are clues on the outside. So here are some clues for you to look at that relate to the outside of your life.
And one of them is you can ask yourself:
What do I love? Out here in the world, what do I love? What brings me joy? What makes me smile?
These are clues! These are clues to who and how you came here to be.
There are two questions you can ask yourself as you sort of take an inventory about your purpose, to get clues. And here they are:
Am I WHERE I want to be and DOING what I want to be doing?
Or … maybe I should say and:
Am I WHO I want to be and BEING how I want to be?
And if your answer to those questions is, “Yes,” rock on! Good for you! Keep going in that direction, and you’ll just go deeper and deeper and deeper into who you came here to be and what you came here to do.
But [laughs] if you can’t say enthusiastic “Yes’s” to those two questions … well then, my question to you is: What’s distracting you from it? What’s taking away your focus from where you want to be? And what you want to be doing? And who you want to be? And how you want to be that way?
What’s the distraction? Get clear about that! And, my friends, do something about it! Okay; it may take some discipline; I know we don’t like that word. It may take some discipline; it may take some focus: and, heaven forbid, it might even be a little bit of work. Take a breath, because it’s worth it. It’s worth it for you to be fully expressing who you are!
Now just to be clear: I want to be very clear, because I’ve mentioned gifts and talents and skills. I want to be very clear that your reason for being here may be related to a gift or a skill that’s very visible. For example, this beautiful singer who you can’t see, but she’s sitting behind the piano right there: Kirsten. Maybe you don’t have that gift; I don’t have that gift. But you have a gift!
And perhaps a big piece of your gift is the way you show up in life: the way you BE. Not what you DO; the way you BE. Maybe you do a lot of things, but maybe you came here with a special gift to show what unconditional love is by loving yourself and others. Maybe you came here to be a stand and a role model for living in integrity. Maybe you came here to speak out for injustice. Maybe you came to be a light; a path. Maybe you came to do; maybe you came to be. My guess is — my vote is: You came to do both … to do and to be.
But I love this quote from Phil Bostra, the author of Through God’s Eyes; we worked with that book last week. He said:
“A destiny of being is every bit as noble and fulfilling as a destiny of doing.”
So whether it is a doing or a being, or both, you came here to be “on purpose.” You came here to fulfill a destiny. Now that you’ve heard all that; I want to take us back again to that beginning, but then to pose a couple of questions.
So if you’re up for it, I invite you to close your eyes again.
And we are going to go back: back, back, a very long time ago when, again — as a reminder — you were pure essence. No form; no personality; no name; no individualization of your own. You were simply one in the essence and the allness of God. Breathe that in again.
And remember — just like you did earlier — remember what you made up as to how it felt. Were there swirling colors? Were there bright lights? Was there pulsating energy? Was there and is there right now an all-pervading, all-encompassing sense of love and peace and calm?
And remember God’s whisper to you: “Go to Earth, my beloved, and be an individualized expression of me.” That is your destiny; that is your purpose! “Go to Earth and be an expression of my love; my light; my truth; my peace; my creativity; my givingness; my joy. Go to Earth and be an expression of my eyes; my ears; my hands; and my heart. And do it in your own unique and perfect way.”
And so now in this room, as you have been reminded now twice of these original instructions, and you are listening again here — perhaps with new ears — I want you to be open to hearing something special: something very special, just for you.
Take a deep breath again, all the way down into your diaphragm, and invite in that message from the Divine. To hear your specific purpose; your specific destiny. Or to be reminded of it if you have forgotten.
Perhaps it’s a special skill or a talent: something you do that you haven’t been doing. Perhaps it’s a way of being that perhaps you haven’t been being.
Just breathe deeply and listen closely, because right now — right here in this room! — God is whispering in your ear. So be still so that you can hear it! Be still so that you can feel it! Be still so that you can sense it and know it! Just be still for these next few moments, and reflect on what your life is as you awaken to your destiny.
[Soloist Kirsten Plambeck ends message by singing, “Be Still and Know” by Dr. Mark Broder]:
Be still and know that I am God.
Fear not for you are not alone.
The lost and those in times of trouble
Are never far from home.
Though storms are raging all around you
No need to ever doubt or fear,
Just let my loving light surround you
Be still and know your God is here.
And if you’re ever lonely
Or if you need a friend
Remember I am only a breath away
On me you can depend
My love is all you need to guide you
Be still and hear my voice inside.
For I am always right beside you
Be still and know that I am God.
And if you’re ever lonely
Or if you need a friend
Remember I am only a breath away
And on me you can depend
My love is all you need to guide you
Be still and hear my voice inside.
For I am always right beside you
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still…and know…
Be still…and know…
Be still and know that I am God.
Copyright 2022 Unity of Phoenix Spiritual Center/Rev. Dr. Michele Whittington